laws for capital murder (and capital drug trafficking) in Singapore. After the Singapore government removed the mandatory death penalty in January 2013 for crimes of murder with no intention to kill and offers an alternative sentence of life imprisonment with/without caning and a chance for all death row inmates to reduce their sentences, Kho Jabing applied to the Court of Appeal to have a chance to reduce his death sentence. In May 2013, the Court of Appeal approved Kho's application and sent his case back to the High Court for re-sentencing, and a re-trial was conducted soon after. Although it was ruled that for Kho's re-sentencing, the original trial judge should review the case, however, at this point of time, High Court judge Kan Ting Chiu, the original trial judge for Kho's case, was retired since 2011 and so it was another High Court judge, who was none other than Tay Yong Kwang himself, who took over as the presiding judge for Kho's re-trial. At the re-trial, as he was not the original trial judge for Kho's murder trial, Justice Tay referenced Justice Kan's written verdict from 2010, as well as that of the Court of Appeal from 2011 in order to reach his decision in this case. On 14 August 2013, Tay decided that the death sentence was not appropriate for Kho as he had taken into consideration Kho's young age (24 years old) at the time of the offence and his choice and use of weapon during the robbery, which was "opportunistic and improvisational", and there is an unclear sequence of events on that night, as noted by the Court of Appeal's verdict. As such, Tay overturned Kho Jabing's death sentence and sentenced him to life in prison and 24 strokes of the cane, making Kho the second convicted murderer on death row to escape the gallows. However, the prosecution, who earlier sought the death penalty at the re-trial, appealed against Tay's decision to impose a life term with caning for Kho on the basis of the brutal nature of the crime, and the appeal was heard before five judges in the Court of Appeal. The prosecution's appeal was narrowly accepted by a 3-2 vote on 14 January 2015 and this led to Kho Jabing being once again sentenced to death, reason being the majority of the five judges (three of them) felt that the crime was vicious